


Inkblots

by MyMisguidedFairytale



Series: light reading [5]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Character Study, Clothing, Detective Noir, Gen, Gift Fic, Hunter Exam (Hunter X Hunter), Mardi Gras, New Orleans, One Shot, Personal Growth, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-07 15:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyMisguidedFairytale/pseuds/MyMisguidedFairytale
Summary: This kind of situation, to Mizaistom, was as black and white as the spots on his jacket. He could not imagine a circumstance where he would be forced to betray his comrades, or one where he could forgive someone who did the same to him. Even when it was for a client, cases like this affected him in a way that felt far too personal.





	Inkblots

**Author's Note:**

> _Inkblots_ was originally written and published on July 18, 2014 on [tumblr](http://cheadle-yorkshire.tumblr.com/post/92179095347/i-really-love-your-fics-that-recent-one-with).
> 
> Everything below is preserved as it was originally posted:
> 
> **Title** : Inkblots  
>  **Pairing** : None  
>  **Word Count** : 2330  
>  **Summary** : This kind of situation, to Mizaistom, was as black and white as the spots on his jacket.  
>  **For** : blue-mint-winter, prompted, " _Could you write a drabble about Mizaistom? Something to do with his outfit_."  
>  **A/N** : Takes place some indeterminate time pre-canon, after Mizaistom becomes a Zodiac. I tried to keep your prompt in mind while giving Mizaistom and his work a very noir-ish flavor, because I think it suits him. I hope you enjoy!

_**Inkblots** _

He was used to it. The strange looks he received on the subway on his morning commute. The pauses and double takes from the other customers in the café where he took coffee and pancakes on the mornings when he had enough time before work. The people he employ do not give his blackened eye or spotted, horned helmet any attention, but it always takes a few words of explanation when he sees prospective clients for them to be truly comfortable with his unconventional appearance.

Such was the case with the woman sitting before him. She’d asked several leading questions, unwilling to outright ask why he chose to wear such an outfit, but when she hesitantly inquired if he’d obtained the black eye in a fight, Mizaistom Nana straightened his arms over the desktop separating the two and counted to five.

“No,” he said, “It is makeup. I simply choose to dress this way.”

“I just wanted to be sure,” she replied. “I don’t care if the person I hire makes brawling a habit, only that if they do, they win.”

“Wonderful.” Her answer was a pleasant surprise. “My firm has a ninety-five percent success rate, so I am confident that we can handle whatever you need.”

She proceeded to tell him her story—she worked as Chief of Operations to a major bank on the Yorubian Continent—and a member of her team had recently revealed themselves as a plant from a rival firm, and had disappeared with a flash drive containing very sensitive information about their accounts. She wanted it recovered, and quickly. Price was no objection. And, once its recovery was complete, she wanted his company to install new security measures to prevent such a thing from happening again. The flash drive was encrypted, but she estimated the opposing company would have it cracked within two days.

“I’ll oversee its recovery myself,” he said. The assignment was welcome—he enjoyed fieldwork, and after he had shown the woman out and finished the preliminary investigative work, his anticipation only grew. According to the information he obtained on the Hunter website, the infiltrator had fled the city to Old Aurélien, where the competitor’s organization was headquartered. He could be on the first flight the next morning, where it would be a simple matter of locating the spy and retrieving the flash drive.

If only anything in his business was simple.

Mizaistom sighed, leaning back in his chair. Behind him, even with the blinds drawn, the sound of thunder and the heavy rain pattering against the windows disrupted his careful focus. He supposed it couldn’t be helped; the outside world would carry on as it liked, whether he invited it to or not. And every second spent in his office was another second closer for the infiltrator to pass on his stolen knowledge. He hated waiting.

He couldn’t decide if it was his line of work that drew such… _colorful_ characters and situations to him, or if it was Mizaistom himself they seemed to flock to.

He tugged at the neck of his jacket. There would be time for philosophizing when he wasn’t on the clock. For now, he had work to do.

—

_“What do you see?”_

_Mizaistom raised an eyebrow. So, it was an inkblot test? What a strange thing to do for the Hunter Exam. What kind of test could this be?_

_“Don’t hesitate! Say the first thing that comes to mind.”_

_He stared at the swirl of black and white spots, elongated in the middle and stretching downward like a drip._

_“…The spots on a cow,” he said._

_The examiner gave him a look, but flipped to the next card. “And this?”_

_“Two cows.”_

_Flip._

_“A cow with wings.”_

_Flip._

_“A small cow with big eyes and bigger horns.”_

_“…”_

_Finally, the examiner sighed, and let the stack of cards fall forward onto his lap. “You…don’t have much imagination, do you?”_

_“Of course I do,” Mizaistom said. “But they all looked the same to me. And I don’t believe that a person’s psychological state really has much bearing on their qualification to be a Hunter, do you? There’s nothing about that in those commands you follow.”_

_“No,” the examiner agreed. “It does not. But, since it is within my power to do so, I would not let someone gain entry into this organization who I believe are psychologically unstable. You pass, by the way.”_

_Mizaistom still felt hesitant, just like when he’d been presented the first inkblot. Everything was a test. Even this. “Thank you, sir,” he said._

_“There’s one more card I’d like you to look at.” The examiner reached to the stack on his lap and pulled a card from the end. He turned it over. “What do you see?”_

_Where before the cards had been in black and white, this one was in stunning color. The reds and blues seemed to bleed out on the edges; on some places the borders of the shapes were soft, on others they were harsh and thick._

_Mizaistom realized he had yet to speak. “It…looks like a person. Like they’re climbing. That part, there,” and he reached out to point at one particular part of the inkblot, “is its arm. It’s reaching out for something.” That blue spot, there, with edges like the points on a star and tendrils like an unfurling flag._

_“And what are_ you _reaching for, Mizaistom?”_

_—_

The most unusual thing happened the moment he exited the taxicab in the financial district of Old Aurélien. It was a Monday, and he expected the typical surge of people leaving work, but the streets were packed with people, and the cabdriver had apologized for being unable to get him any closer to the bank headquarters—that street had been blocked off for the parade, they had explained, as had many of the others in Aurélien’s city center. The number of tourists at the airport had been excessively high, but it had never occurred to him that he would be walking right into the city during their largest cultural festival.

It was _Lundi Mince_ , the cabdriver informed him, with a laugh at Mizaistom’s disgruntled expression. “Never would have thought you weren’t here for the party,” they said as Mizaistom left the cab, “with the way you’re dressed.”

For the first time in recent memory—since joining the Zodiac Twelve—no one seemed to be paying him any adverse attention. Rather, the costumes he saw on the men and women around him were even more elaborate and accurate than any the Zodiacs chose to wear—a man dressed as an alligator walked past him carrying a trumpet, and a group wearing feathers on their arms and hair in different neon colors waited arm-in-arm for the streetlight to change. Mizaistom headed straight for the bank building, following the crush of people moving towards what had to be the center of the parade route.

The bank headquarters soared more than fifty stories into the sky, created of glass and pillars of grey marble that supported a large, open atrium. Mizaistom watched from across the street, leaning unobtrusively against a lamp-post. The building seemed to be hosting some kind of party—the doors were open, and staff offered beaded necklaces with the bank’s logo to anyone passing by. Banners hung from the windows advertised their sponsorship of one of the parade floats.

No one gave him more than a glance; for once he blended into the backdrop of the city, unnoticed and unremarkable. It was an extraordinary feeling, like one of weightlessness, and he allowed the smallest of smiles to pull at the corner of his mouth. How fortuitous indeed. The infiltrator had surely come back on this day to use the celebration as cover, but it would actually prove to help Mizaistom blend in more than on any other day.

He staked out the building from the coffeeshop across from the bank, waiting out the hours of the early afternoon and sipping on a coffee. According to his sources, the infiltrator hadn’t yet swiped his key card for entry into the building, so he would have to wait until the other man showed up. Mizaistom was only charged with recovering the flash drive, not with taking the spy to justice, but to him he could not let one happen without ensuring the accomplishment of the other.

Another half hour passed before a man matching the photographs Mizaistom had been given walked, with an air of caution only possessed by the guilty, up to the bank. He took the main entrance, and slipped inside with a brief glance over one shoulder.

Mizaistom stood and left. He didn’t want to waste any time, not when his target was so close and he had no intel on how close the others were to cracking the encryption.

He crossed the street, and approached one of the women handing out necklaces. He accepted one, slipping it over his helmet with some difficulty. The woman gave him a charming smile.

“Love the costume,” she said.

As he struggled with the necklace, he studied the bank’s atrium through the giant glass windows, noting the positions of each visible entrance, elevator, and stairwell, in case his target attempted to escape. Unlikely, as his research showed the man knew no Nen and would have no chance of breaking out of the hold of Mizaistom’s ability.

If the infiltrator was attempting to decrypt the flash drive, they would need to be in the place with the most secure, advanced computers and technicians—which in this building meant the Information Technology department, located on the 30th floor.

Thanking the woman, he continued onward, around the building and down a far less populated side street. There was an unmanned, automatic parking garage for staff, and the entrance that staff would use. He entered the garage and approached the door, conjuring a card with the image of a keyhole printed on one side. He swiped it through the electronic lock, and the lights on the side glowed green before the lock opened for him.

The next door and the staff elevator received similar treatment, and when the elevator doors opened on the 30th floor Mizaistom stepped out into an empty hallway. Because of the holiday, most of the staff would be out or taking off early—a point that the spy would have surely believed to work in his favor, now also working more for Mizaistom’s—and he walked with a measured efficiency down the hallway, towards the offices where the major computing for the building was located.

The doors were locked—manually, not electronically, this time—but each had a window that looked in on the rooms inside, and when Mizaistom came across one with a figure hunched over a computer, dressed the same as the man he’d seen on the street, he broke the lock with a quick, Nen-enhanced punch, and entered the room.

At the noise the man looked up in surprise, but he recovered quickly and attempted to shield the computer with his body.

“I’m here for the flash drive,” Mizaistom said, as calmly as he could muster. “You must be Mr. Allen?”

“And you must have been sent by Western Yorubia.” He straightened his back, and when he reached out with one hand towards the computer’s CPU Mizaistom conjured a card with an exclamation point on one side.

“Don’t move,” he said.

Allen’s arm shot towards the flash drive, but before he could pull it from the CPU Mizaistom had rotated the card and Allen’s entire body froze, save for his blinking eyes and the increased harshness of his breathing.

“You won’t get away with this!” he shouted.

Mizaistom ignored him, approaching the computer and disengaging the encryption efforts. He ejected the flash drive and pocketed it inside his spotted jacket.

“We can pay you good money. Just give it back. Work for us instead. How does that sound?”

His eyes narrowed, seeing red. “From the start, you were only looking out for yourself. Playing the people who should’ve been on your team.” He looked at the other man in disgust. “And you do this to prove your loyalty to your employers? They should be worried about you, with allegiance so fickle.”

He cocked his head, imagining the security staff that would likely discover this man here, after investigating the strange disturbances in their electronic locks from Mizaistom’s ability. “You cannot buy me.”

The man continued to make promises, his expression growing increasingly strained from the way his arms were stretched-out and frozen, and the complete disregard Mizaistom showed for his words.

“I’m going to let them have you. You will see how merciful your employers really are when you give them no reason to provide you any.”

He left the man there, unwilling to give him a second more of his time or attention. This kind of situation, to Mizaistom, was as black and white as the spots on his jacket. He could not imagine a circumstance where he would be forced to betray his comrades, or one where he could forgive someone who did the same to him. Even when it was for a client, cases like this affected him in a way that felt far too personal.

On the street, once again, no one paid him much attention as he walked in the direction of the crowds, towards Aurélien’s busiest streets. He supposed it was a nice feeling, but he’d had enough of it. He didn’t want it, anyway; if he did, he wouldn’t have made the choice to put the helmet on each morning, or blacken his left eye with cosmetics.

The flash drive in his pocket felt lighter than air. He slipped one hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around it before slipping away from the crowd and into the shadows of the city.

—

_“And what are you reaching for, Mizaistom?”_

_When his answer came, it came with certainty. “Tomorrow.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
> 1) Old Aurélien was, obviously, inspired by New Orleans and Lundi Mince (Slim Monday) was inspired by Mardi Gras. The jazz alligator is inspired by the character of Louis from _The Princess and the Frog_.
> 
> 2) I realize I’ve taken grand amounts of liberty with my depictions of the inkblot tests and with the technology associated with Mizaistom’s case. Everything was fictionalized.
> 
> 3) We also only know of the ‘yellow card’ and the ‘exclamation point’ card applications of Mizaistom’s ability; I expanded on that and gave him the ability to conjure a card that can access electronic locks. 
> 
> 4) Thank you for reading! I would appreciate and value your comments. ~Jess


End file.
